


alone among the wreck

by cascrane (thunder_and_stars)



Category: no sleep in the city of dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:23:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28881660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thunder_and_stars/pseuds/cascrane
Summary: Aydan is stumbling back, chest and eyes burning in entirely different and terribly similar ways. His whole body trembles, really, shoulders shaking and hands impossibly unsteady as he takes a staggering step back and hits the wall.The cold of the concrete seeps through his clothes, and the impact sends a jarring pain through his spine, but he doesn’t care. His balance fails, knees giving in with the rest of his body, and he slumps to the floor, curling into a ball.





	alone among the wreck

Aydan is stumbling back, chest and eyes burning in entirely different and terribly similar ways. His whole body trembles, really, shoulders shaking and hands impossibly unsteady as he takes a staggering step back and hits the wall.

The cold of the concrete seeps through his clothes, and the impact sends a jarring pain through his spine, but he doesn’t care. His balance fails, knees giving in with the rest of his body, and he slumps to the floor, curling into a ball.

Nya is somewhere in the vague distance -- everything seems too close and impossibly far and he doesn’t even know where he is anymore -- and she is injured and it is his fault.

He can’t breathe. He manages to pull his head up, leaning it heavily against the wall as he sucks in heaving breaths, chest shuddering and spasming. There is blood -- real, literal blood, crimson and slick and metallic and horribly, horribly warm -- on his hands, though it spots his clothes and streaks across his cheeks where he dragged his hand across his face, where he tangled his fingers into his hair. 

He doesn’t know whose blood it is. Some of it is his, probably (that would explain the sharp pains spread across his skin, reaching deep into him to grab at his soul). He knows some is Nya’s -- Nya falling next to him, a horrible spray of her blood against his bare skin, Nya fallen, blood seeping across his hands as he tries to help, not enough, never enough -- and he cannot breathe.

He rests his tremoring hands on his knees. Blood is congealing into the creases of his skin, relentlessly stuck under his nails. The fighting is over, maybe, or ending. He doesn’t know, and he cannot honestly bring himself to care.

He is far from the others now, far from the fighting, or perhaps maybe he is still there, in the thick of everything; he can’t tell anymore, can’t see anything beyond his own body and the unending flashes of Nya hurt, of blood and violence and horror that seem etched into his eyelids, unrelenting. 

He is hidden, perhaps, or the others are too busy to notice him. Either way, he is away from worried glances and prying eyes and the horrified gazes he  _ knows _ he’ll see on his friends. He curls in on himself further, almost unconsciously, and he blinks back tears for a second as the dam shatters within him.

His skull is pounding, blood loud and roaring in his ears, and he cries, tears slowly trickling into sanguine streaked across his skin.

He cries because he couldn’t protect his sister like he was meant to, because he is just a child, still, and he is not enough. He cries because the man who showed him the world he hadn’t know he needed is dead, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

He cries because he is seventeen, and he just killed somebody.

He is numb, bloodied and messy and battle-worn, weary and aching and  _ hurt _ , and he is nothing. Aydan, who is nothing, who has nothing without his sister, who doesn’t remember how to care in this moment, who is on the ground in the midst of a battle, broken and breaking still, cries. He doesn’t know what else to do.

Mitchell -- Jackal’s  _ friend _ \-- had come out of nowhere, eyes bleeding black and mind irreparably corrupted. There wasn’t anything else to do, really. The others had told him to do it, told him it was right.

But Mitchell is --  _ was, had been _ \-- a person, a real human person, with a mind and a life and dreams and memories and hopes, and now he was…

Dead. Gone. Nothing.

And that was Aydan’s fault.

It wasn’t even Aydan’s fault in the way that Nya being hurt was Aydan’s fault -- that would be too easy, of course. Aydan had failed to protect Nya. That was his fault. 

It was Aydan’s fault in the way that he had torn through Mitchell’s heart with a blade formed of pure energy, created from his very fingers, and Mitchell had fallen, a spray of black tar blood and crimson across Aydan as he tried to stay steady.

Aydan, who was quiet and kind -- he hoped, at least, that he was kind -- and never started fights if he could do literally anything else, had killed a person. He had fought monsters before, but monsters were different, and this was different, and maybe Aydan was really a monster too, now.

He had known Mitchell. He had met the man, only a few times, granted, but he had met him, and Mitchell was Jackal’s friend, was one of the people they were supposed to be protecting, and Aydan killed him.

He can’t breathe.


End file.
